Friday, December 11, 2009. Peppermill In The Rain. Walking down the gravel road to our mailbox during a short pause in the cold drizzle, I heard the squawking of a large flock of birds in the woods. They'd stopped there, I guess, to line up and take roll call before taking off for the next leg of their migration. They will have to fly across the lake, or detour around it. What a pain in the tail feathers! But then over the Gulf of Mexico? In this weather? I'm glad I'm not a bird.
The rain was a little too insistent for me to follow through on my original dinner plan at the Bon Ton. It's only two blocks, but I didn't have my umbrella. Also on my mind was Andrea's, where pianist Phil Melancon is playing in the bar on Friday nights. But the parking lot was full, meaning that Andrea was working a big private party or two, which in turn meant that the food wouldn't be up to snuff. And the rain was getting harder. Impastato's? Another full parking lot. Drago's? Forget about it. But there's always room at the Peppermill at dinner. A parking spot was open close enough to duck in without getting too damp. Coincidentally, I'd put out a revised review of the place today, so I was primed.
They had French onion soup on the menu: the perfect thing on a chilly night. The cheese was overloaded and the broth could have been darker, but it hit the spot anyway. One of the entree specials was chicken florentine. Talk about a dish whose day is past! It used to be on white-tablecloth menus all over town, from Commander's Palace on down. A rich, rich dish, with creamed spinach underneath and mornay sauce on top, run under the broiler until it bubbled. I can think of only two restaurants that still serve it: Antoine's and Vincent's. I had to get it, of course. It was a little loose, but tasty enough. Creamed spinach used to be made much thicker than it is these days. Maybe it was because frozen spinach was the standard back then.
In between those two courses came a basic green salad with the Italian vinaigrette. That salad dressing always reaches deep into my Proustian taste memories. It was the house dressing at the old Buck Forty-Nine Steak House, a restaurant I dined in frequently when I was in my late teens and early twenties. The Peppermill is an offshoot of the now-extinct Buck Forty-Nine, and that dressing lives on.
I drove home, listening to a book entitled The Worst Bad Time, about the Dust Bowl days in 1930s Oklahoma. That seems to have been much worse an ordeal for those people than I thought. Makes me feel lucky that the worst food matter I have to complain about this day is that the creamed spinach under the chicken florentine was too loose.
Peppermill. Metairie: 3524 Severn Ave. 504-455-2266. Creole. Italian. Breakfast.
